Artificial intelligence provides businesses with powerful new tools for driving enhanced customer experiences. It empowers hyper-personalization, scales infinitely as demands increase, and provides 24/7 availability of information and support.

Consequently, it should come as no surprise that some of the top trends in customer experience for 2024 are AI-powered innovations. The following are some developments that businesses looking to leverage AI to improve customer experience should consider.

Deploying AI to Provide Better Self-Service Options

Meeting customer expectations in today's business world means providing self-service opportunities. Consumers are looking for digital front doors that are wide open and lead to an experience that is easy to navigate without relying on a human representative.

However, according to recent stats, businesses are failing to provide that experience, with only 15 percent of consumers saying they are happy with the self-service brands are providing through their websites. The rest are dissatisfied with the information provided or the hoops that must be jumped through to get to it.

"The digital-first marketplace has a problem that stems from an overabundance of information," explains Jay Wolcott, CEO of Knowbl. "Most companies have plenty of helpful information that can help potential customers progress on their journey. The problem is they aren't providing a way for it to be accessible and empowering. They don't make it knowable."

Knowbl is a revolutionary customer engagement platform that provides customers with AI-driven automated self-service options. It reduces the effort consumers need to put into their journey by empowering real-time automated virtual brand assistants. By using a brand's existing content to train AI, Knowbl creates BrandGPT that delivers the information consumers need to make informed decisions.

"Building BrandGPT allows brands to unleash their internal information in a powerful way, giving consumers a tool that can guide them through the discovery and consideration phases of the customer journey," Wolcott says. "It's those early phases of the journey—where first impressions are made—businesses need to focus on. They play a big role in informing the buy phase."

Deploying AI to Provide Better Last-Mile Logistics

In the era of e-commerce, every company is expected to facilitate delivery services that are fast, flexible, and affordable. Failing on that front significantly detracts from the customer experience.

"Customers want more transparency when it comes to deliveries," says Anar Mammadov, CEO of Senpex Technology. "They want to know where their package or order is in the delivery process. They also want to know if it will be delivered on time, and if it won't, they want to know when they can expect it. One of the top trends in last-mile logistics for 2024 is leveraging AI to enhance transparency in delivery."

Senpex is a personalized logistics and delivery service that utilizes groundbreaking artificial intelligence to dynamically optimize routes and empower the fastest and most efficient last-mile delivery resources. Senpex's delivery API integrations allow any company to enhance its e-commerce marketplace or enterprise resource planning system with a fully automated delivery dispatch system.

"Improved transparency is just one of the customer experience improvements AI is bringing to last-mile logistics," Mammadov explains. "It is also empowering dynamic route optimization that makes sure delivery efficiency is always optimal. AI-driven customer sentiment analysis is an evolving trend, allowing customers to improve customer experience with data-driven decisions. AI-managed autonomous vehicles promise to be another game changer in 2024, giving consumers an option that is more efficient and more eco-friendly."

Deploying AI to Provide Experiential Moments

Experiential moments play a critical role in customer experience. They provide meaningful interactions that evoke an emotional response from the customer.

By leveraging AI, brands are creating more opportunities for experiential moments that stand out and create a strong brand connection. Empowering customer service reps with AI-driven personalization is one way a commonplace customer interaction can be transformed into an experiential moment. AI tools that streamline the customer onboarding process create a frictionless experience that meets expectations and sets the stage for customer loyalty.

Lee Romaire, CEO of Romaire Studios, Inc., sees great potential in using AI-driven robotics to drive entertainment-based experiential moments.

"You'll see more of this type of customer experience happening in theme parks and other spaces where brands are creating experiential moments through having characters interact with consumers in an engaging way," Romaire says. "Using AI to drive interactions, as well as to assist in the design of the characters, is an emerging area resulting in some amazing creations. There is definitely potential in it to take customer experiences to the next level."

Romaire Studios is one of the foremost providers of live-action creatures, characters, and props for the global entertainment industry. The studio's work is considered the aesthetic standard for the theme park industry, providing movie-quality realism to animatronic human figures.

Enhancing the customer experience will always be a top priority for brands. AI provides the tools to identify better the experience customers want, design the experience for optimal impact, and scale it as needs increase. Brands that leverage AI for those purposes will gain a competitive edge in attracting and serving today's consumers.